Season 2 ends-Season 3 begins

[silencbank]

Earlier today Blizzard has finally announced that Season 2 of the ladder will end soon and Season 3 will soon follow. Season 2 will have a ladder lock the same as Season 1, where you will no longer be able to be promoted or demoted and the bonus pool will stop accruing points. The ladder lock for Season 2 will start Tuesday, July 5th at 5:00 AM PDT and continue until Tuesday July 19th When Season 3 begins after that Tuesday's morning maintenance. Please keep in mind that your Match Maker Rating (MMR/Hidden rating) will continue to change with each win or loss when the ladder is locked.

For the full information on this announcement go to http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/3031252#blog and read Blizzard's announcement.

(If the mods want to delete this post in lieu of "official" SC:L post then by all means have at it)

[JackhammerIV]

In light of this information...how long has season 2 lasted??

[Blazur]

Jesus Christ they're making these seasons WAY too short. The end of the first season is what nearly sapped all my desire to continue playing. Unless you're really dedicated to the game a 6 month season barely gives players enough time to get an established record. The game hasn't even been out for a year and already the season has been reset twice.

[Randobob]

Totally Agree. I would like to seasons be a year long. Is there some good reason I'm not thinking of that would justify season 2 being so short? I only have like 100 1v1 wins, and even less team wins. I think it makes the seasons seem somewhat meaningless, and detracts from someones overall profile.

[Gradius]

Yeah too short IMO. A year would be solid. :/

In light of this information...how long has season 2 lasted??

4 months.

[Twilice]

_T.T_

[JackhammerIV]

Yeah. The seasons are really really short. The main reason is to get rid of inactive players. To active players it's fine. It gets rid of the people who completely stopped playing at all. But the casual players who rarely play feel it to be too short.

I haven't even played like 50 games this season. Seems to kinda discourage casual players that their win counts and rating get dropped to 0 quite frequently. And requires more effort with each season to total up wins across seasons; having to click through it on B.Net and all.

I don't mind these seasons being 3-4 months IF there's a clear indicator of your win/loss overall and for past seasons that's easily found and accessed, as well as an indicator of skill (MMR) being visible. Even just saying "Low/Mid/High" in each league would be a major improvement.

Added to that the fact that personally Blizzard seems to be doing these seasons in such a way that I only really seem to be playing at the start and end of seasons.

[Gradius]

I think their reasoning is that each new season gives people an opportunity to start fresh and get back into it esp. if they haven't played in a while, so seasons should restart more often.

[JackhammerIV]

I think their reasoning is that each new season gives people an opportunity to start fresh and get back into it esp. if they haven't played in a while, so seasons should restart more often.

Well...the way it's done I don't think that really applies. Think about...
1. Johnny bronze with 200wins (and a hidden 300 losses) in season 2. Suddenly season 3 comes and he's back to 0 wins. And he's saddened because if he wants to see those 200 wins he has to dig and find past season results and not right on his profile page. He remains oblivious to his losses and win/loss ratio.

2. Starting fresh means you were doing badly and you just want a reset. By only showing win/loss to people masters and above....technically only masters and above players would want the fresh start since everyone else kinda doesn't know if they need a fresh start unless they expend the effort to find out (save replays, analyse, etc). And if they do expend the effort they want to keep a constant record and check how they do across time. They have their own win/loss analysis tables and so don't mind so much about the reset.

3. Now those masters players in 2. They're playing seriously to improve and are good at the game. If they see a negative win ratio they just take it as they suck and strive harder for improve. That competitive attitude doesn't suit a "fresh start" mentality.

4. Getting back into it. I come under this category. Barely have any games played. Too busy with life, school, work or just watching SC2 instead of playing it. Then now a reset. So it feels like I have to start over again and not continue on. The equivalent is like I played WoW and got a character to level 20 then I took a long break. Then now my character is back to level 1. In terms of the visible achievement that others can see I'm back to the beginning. I have more knowledge and skill than before obviously but the reset has sort of relegated my past achievements and basically made me feel like I should have spent more time getting it to as high a level as i wanted before reset.

I'll probably make an effort to be in the category of "keep track of record". Using that sc2analysis.com site. But still feels crap to be back at 0points in diamond (hopefully) when season 3 comes around.

[GnaReffotsirk]

Wait, I don't understand the lock thingy.

So, if say I am locked in gold, will I still be playing against gold players even if my uber-skillz are better matched against say, diamond players?

If so, will these wins be counted and lead to a promotion next season?

If I were to stay in gold and fight diamond players, and get an equal footing with them, will this count towards a promotion next season?